Morality - Empirical Approach
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Morality - Empirical Approach
1. Introduction In this paper I wish to consider the following related
questions: (i) Can a system of morality be justified?; (ii) Why should one act
morally?; (iii) How can others be persuaded to act morally? Clearly none of
these questions is new, and moral philosophers have proposed a variety of
responses to them over the centuries without reaching any general agreement.
Nevertheless, because these questions are fundamental to any practical
application of moral theory, it is worthwhile to continue to reflect upon them.
For Jewish, Christian and Muslim societies, the justification of morality is the
Word of God as expressed in the Bible and Koran. Given an authoritative text
containing basic moral premises, the appropriate method for obtaining rules of
conduct is a process of logical deduction from those premises to conclusions.
However, if we focus our inquiry on European and American societies in the
present century, the decline of belief in religious authority has undermined
this approach to moral theory for many people. This monumental change-for
morality-may be attributed to many factors. An increase in multicultural studies
has emphasized the wide variety of beliefs that human beings hold, which may
have led more people to doubt that any one of them is authoritative. A number of
writers over the years have commented on the correspondence of specific
religious beliefs with one's society of birth, again leading thoughtful
individuals to question the authority of their childhood religious beliefs. As a
general sociological observation, one can point to a positive correlation
between increasing educational level and a diminished belief in the authority of
religious texts. When thoughtful persons reject religious authority as the basis
of morality, it becomes necessary to find another basis for moral beliefs. One
of the few statements about contemporary moral philosophy which is unlikely to
encounter opposition is that no moral theory enjoys wide acceptance. At present
the most widely discussed theories of morality in the British-American
literature are utilitarianism, deontology and social contract theory. The well
known utilitarian approach to ethical (note 1) decision making was proposed by
Jeremy Bentham in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
(1789) and elaborated by John Stuart Mill in several books, e.g., Utilitarianism
(1863). In Chapter 1, Bentham defines utility as that which "tends to
pro...
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